CNG fueling station construction accelerates

Faster than you can say, “Fill ’er up,” compressed natural gas stations are sprouting up along and near the busy Interstate 79/Interstate 80 corridor in western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia and eastern Ohio.

If all goes as planned, there will be at least 11 CNG stations open or under construction in the tristate area by year-end — a milestone in the build-out of infrastructure needed to make CNG a low-cost alternative fuel source to commercial transportation fleets plying the regional interstates.

“I think we’re at the beginning of the next Industrial Revolution,” said Robert Beatty Jr., founder and managing partner of “O” Ring CNG Fuel Systems LP, a developer of CNG stations based in Coolspring, Jefferson County. “Within the next three years, you are going to see an extensive network of CNG stations in Pennsylvania. There will be a CNG station every 40 to 50 miles” in the I-79/80 corridor.

Three new CNG stations are coming online this summer. Now open is “O” Ring’s latest site, at the junction of I-80 and Route 28 in Brookville, about 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. American Natural Retail’s station on the South Side, located on Carson Street at the site of a former Exxon near Station Square, opens this month. Next month, Dublin, Ohio-based IGS Energy-CNG Services will open a CNG station at Bridgeport, W.Va., the first of three it has planned to open along the I-79 corridor in the Mountaineer State by year-end as part of a $10 million build-out.

Slated to open by December are IGS stations in Charleston and Jane Lew, W.Va,; Giant Eagle’s station along Route 228 in Cranberry (joining the CNG site already operating in Crafton); and Beemac Trucking LLC’s first CNG station, in Ambridge, Beaver County.

IGS also has announced plans to break ground on a CNG station in the Youngstown, Ohio, area by year-end. And “O” Ring is mulling plans to locate CNG stations in Columbus, Ohio, and Chambersburg, Beatty said.

Demand is driving the expansion. More and more businesses are converting their commercial fleets to take advantage of the cheap Marcellus Shale natural gas that’s readily available in the tristate region. CNG costs roughly half as much as diesel fuel, a price edge that isn’t expected to evaporate anytime soon.

“We are just continually seeing volume grow” at EQT Corp.’s CNG station in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, said David Ross, the company’s vice president of demand development. EQT opened the station in 2011 and recently completed an expansion, adding two dispensers with four more fuel pumps, to meet the growing demand.

He said the station, which serves mostly fleet vehicles like taxis and delivery trucks, will break even on a cash-flow basis by the end of this year.

CNG is a cleaner-burning alternative fuel to gasoline and diesel. It’s made by compressing natural gas to less than 1 percent of the volume it would occupy at standard atmospheric pressure. It is then stored in containers at a pressure of 2,900 to 3,600 pounds per square inch.

CNG stations cost about $1.5 million to $2.5 million to build, depending on the cost of land, compressors and storage, said Rick Price, executive director of the Pittsburgh Region Clean Cities. He said his phone is ringing off the hook from private capitalists looking to invest in local CNG stations.

“We think now that the infrastructure is here, that more people will take a look at CNG, whether it be for their commercial fleet or personal use,” he said.

Cynics should know that the CNG construction boom is not being driven by pie-in-the-sky, build-it-and-they-will-come environmental do-gooders. In fact, none of these stations are being built without upfront agreements or contracts with commercial customers.

For example, IGS had commitments from several Marcellus Shale energy companies, including Antero Resources, Chesapeake Energy Corp. and EQT, before it announced plans to build its West Virginia stations.

EQT built its Strip District station in part to service its own fleet — it’s on pace to convert 200 vehicles, or 14 percent, of its light-duty fleet to bifuel by year-end. And Beemac Trucking says that, in addition to serving local commercial fleets, its CNG station will fuel 20 CNG-only heavy-duty trucks it has recently purchased.

Beemac, which received a $469,000 state grant to build its station, will break ground on construction this month, said David Dudo, senior vice president of operations. He said the unmanned station will open round-the-clock to the public in October.

Most of the CNG activity today is centered on serving closed-loop truck fleets — trucks and vans that start and return to the same spot each day, usually on a single tank of gas. Garbage trucks, package-delivery vans, taxis and public buses are the primary customers.

But as the build-out of stations progresses, it will increase the opportunity to expand CNG to a wider audience, including long-haul truckers and everyday commuters, said Mark Fischer, market manager for Rettew Associates, a Pennsylvania engineering firm that also provides consulting and construction-related services to the natural gas industry.

“As these stations continue to be built, more of them will be accessible to public users,” Fischer said.

Ken Zapinski, senior vice president of energy and infrastructure at the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, concurred there will eventually be a trickle-down benefit to consumers.

“As the infrastructure becomes more readily available and people find it to be more commonplace, commuter usage will pick up,” Zapinski said.